It doesn’t begin as oppression, or not the kind of oppression it later becomes. After Rome falls, after the barbarians and wanderers of the north cease their warring and settle behind the plow, there come the manors. We call them lord and lady now, but these words rise from Old English ancestors: hlaford, the guard of the loaves, and hlæfdige, the kneader of the dough. A sense of provision, of protection. Something all at once good and necessary. But it’s of no surprise this degrades into abuse—of power, of people, of food. The universe is overcome by entropy, and this of the moral kind, where eventually all that is conceived as excellent and noble and true—governments and philosophies and religions and men—begins to break apart into corrupt particles of dust.
One might call it sin.
Why, then, does the serf stay in the field, providing bread for the lord when he hardly has enough for his own children? Eventually uprisings come, but not for hundreds of years because the monks and priests have done their jobs too well. Are all men not bondservants of Christ? they say to the peasant. They have become people, not possessions. And at once, the lowly position is given a measure of holiness, of status.
Of worth.
Those who work with grain—who sow and reap and thresh and grind—they remind themselves they are the worthiest of all as they are pieces in the passion of the bread, making it possible for God incarnate to come to them in the Eucharist, every day, just as he told his first disciples, This is my body.
Autumn sweeps into Vermont with unseasonably cool nights and mornings. Afternoons are as warm as usual, plenty of people strolling in summer clothes, still buying ice-cream cones and attending the farmer’s market, though snap peas and tomatoes have given way to stalks of celery and apples and squash. I wear a sweatshirt over my T-shirt and bring a pair of socks downstairs with me in the morning, peeling off the extra layer once I get into the warm kitchen. But by evening, once the fire has died in the oven and there’s a breeze sneaking in through the back screen door, my long sleeves are back on and I loosen the elastic on my hiking sandals to accommodate my socks. Fortunately, the bakehouse is closed and no customers see this statement of fashion, but even if they did, no one would think twice. Tweed socks with sandals are a very Vermont thing to do.
With children back in school, Cecelia comes again each afternoon, the bus dropping her in front of the bakehouse around half past three, on the other side of the street, and she waits there until the driver gives an exaggerated okay with his fingers and then points for her to cross. Seamus has her in public first grade this year. She runs from one sidewalk to the other and bursts through the door, which I keep unlocked for her. She remembers to turn the deadbolt and announces, “I’m here,” to the room, whether empty or not. Usually Tee, Gretchen, and I are in the kitchen, and she bursts in like New Year’s Day, the ends of her hair still chewed, her tummy growing a bit rounder as she readies for a growth spurt. Tee makes her a snack and Gretchen tells her it’s time to make their list, and Cecelia writes each chore as Gretchen dictates, words like shaker and ceramic creatively spelled. All our routines from the spring resurrected, and I can almost pretend nothing has changed. Until the dough preparation begins. Until Seamus shows up. Until I stumble up to my apartment at night, my loneliness exposed.
We make two hundred loaves a day, and while thirty or forty of them remain unsold each afternoon at closing, Xavier tells me to trust him. Once the show airs, we’ll be glad we followed his advice and became accustomed to the quantity. And all of it, he promises, will sell. He knows business, and so we work to learn how to double the bread we bake, not adding variety so much as producing more of the old favorites. It’s easier now with Rebekah here; Gretchen can begin helping me with the dough earlier in the day. And Seamus comes in the evenings, rolling up his sleeves and kneading together flour and water with his giant hands. He arrives by five, right about the time Gretchen leaves, continues where she left off, and stays until seven or eight. Sometimes he brings dinner. Cecelia does her homework and plays with scraps of dough, like clay, making balls and snakes and bracelets, or watches cartoons on her father’s phone. When I ask if perhaps Cecelia would be better off at home, he says, “She’d be doing the same thing there as here. And you’d be all by yourself.”
Working with Seamus is different. With Xavier and Jude and Gretchen, we avoid one another, each of us in our own bubble of space, no one too close to the other. Seamus can’t help but invade the borders around me, his body taking up so much volume of its own. But he also creeps close on purpose. Our hips bump. His arm against my back. My hair in my face as I’m wrist-deep in dough, and he adjusts the barrettes for me, clipping my bangs out of my eyes and saying, “I think you need a haircut.”
“I haven’t decided if I’m growing it out or not.” And then without considering, I add, “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. You look nice however your hair is.” He reaches for the thermometer in the measuring cup beside him, his usually dexterous fingers suddenly ten limp tentacles, and the water washes over the table, dripping off the side and threatening Cecelia’s addition worksheet. She squeals and lifts her paper high in the air. I dam the spill with kitchen towels and Seamus wipes the floor. “Sorry.”
“It’s just water.”
“The help shouldn’t make more work for you.”
My face twists, one side scrunching until I can see only from the opposite eye, and I shake my head. “You’re not the help.”
I’ve sprung the trapdoor. Seamus turns my way in all his transparency, and I read his expression. What am I, then?
I am not Seamus, who tacks his emotions to the outside of his skin and whose words charge from his mouth on horseback. No one sees through me, except Xavier, and he does so not because I choose to give him access but because he knows himself. I will have to offer myself to Seamus, if I want something more with him. Part of me can’t believe I’d contemplate it, even for a moment. What do I have in common with an oversized yarn-spinning, bread-mauling, divorced deliveryman attached to a seven-year-old? The rest of me doesn’t know if I remember how to be close to another person. I practice mimicry, a Viceroy butterfly masquerading as a Monarch, a Superb Lyrebird echoing the calls of everything from chickadees to chain saws. I practice stories of my past, telling this sad memory or that scary one, and people feel I’m confiding in them because the words touch their deepest wounds, not because the tales hold any emotional resonance for me. My intimacies, the ones that have become my Sisyphus stones, are kept only for me. I don’t tell and no one notices; my first of two long-term romantic relationships, the college one, ended with the nice young man shocked when I said I didn’t love him and we had nothing in common. “We’ve spent two years talking about everything,” he said.
Yes, mimicry.
This is why I run from God. I am not ignorant of his requirement of me to empty myself to him. I’m not lazy. Even though, cognitively, I know he is omnipotent, I don’t want to surrender my most vulnerable places. And I don’t want him poking around in there on his own.
Cecelia, fortunately, decides to break the increasingly awkward silence. “Daddy’s gonna let me stay up late for your party. And if I’m too tired in the morning, he says maybe I can stay home from school the next day.”
“What party?”
“The one for the cooking show.”
I shrug toward Seamus, who says, “A surprise, Cecelia. Remember?”
The girl clamps both hands over her mouth.
“What surprise?” I ask, more insistent.
“The Gazette and the network set it up. They’ve invited everyone who was at the taping to come back for the show’s premier. The newspaper is setting up a big-screen TV here. They’re running some sort of story to announce you winning.”
“Was someone planning to let me in on the big surprise?”
“Xavier. I guess he hasn’t gotten around to it yet.”
“I guess not.” I swipe a hill of excess flour from the counter into my hand, shak
e it off into the sink. Then I dampen a cloth and scrub at the mess. “I think I’m done for the night. It’s late. You both should probably be getting home too.”
“Are you mad?” Cecelia asks. She picks at the corner of her homework page. I must be wearing quite the black expression.
I try to add lightness to my voice. “Mad? Nope, not mad. It’s just getting late and you look like you need to get to bed.”
She stifles a yawn. “I only did that ’cause you mentioned bed. Sleepy words make people yawn. It’s a fact.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. Daddy says.”
“Daddy also says you get grumpy as a bear when you don’t get enough rest,” Seamus tells her. He zips her colored pencils into her case and smoothes her math worksheet into a glossy kitten folder. “Liesl’s right. Go ahead and use the bathroom so we can get you home.”
“I don’t hafta go.”
“You will once you’ve been in the truck for three minutes.”
“I can’t help it. All the bumps make that happen.”
“Go on, grumpy bear.”
He lifts her from the stool. She scrunches her face—her mean expression—and growls a generic sort of growl that could be any number of wild beasts, clawing the air and shuffling to the restroom. Once the door closes, Seamus says, “So, are you mad?”
“No.” I sigh. “I’m just tired of feeling like everything is out of my control. Which it isn’t, as Zave would remind me. I’ve had choices. Or I’ve made the choice not to make choices. All of it got me here.”
“Here isn’t so bad.”
“I know. Really, I do. I’m not all that good at being thankful.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah,” he says. I wait for him to elaborate but he doesn’t, instead carrying several buckets of dough to the cooler. I’ll need another soon, with the increased volume, but for now I’ve added several recipes to the menu where the shaped dough proofs at room temperature overnight, freeing up space. I move those containers to the end of the table, spread cornmeal, and begin forming boules and bâtards, dipping my hands in a bowl of water to prevent the dough from adhering to my skin.
“So, I’m wondering what you’re doing this coming Saturday.”
“Working.”
“I mean, after that. Once the store closes.”
I shrug. “Same as always, I guess. Eat. Sleep. Wait with anticipation for the new season of Bake-Off with Jonathan Scott to begin.”
“Funny.”
“I’m all laughs these days.”
Quiet, and then an annoying scraping sound. I look up. Seamus rakes dried dough from the table with his fingernails. “Just leave it,” I tell him. “I’ll get it with a spatula later.”
“What? Oh, yeah. Right. Okay.” He draws air in, exhales; his shaky breath rustles the escaped strands of hair around my face. “Want to go to a movie?”
“What are you seeing?”
“Anything you want. You can pick.”
My sweatshirt sleeves, which I had pulled all the way past my elbows before I began working with the dough, slide down my forearms, pooling at my wrists. I try to slip them back up with my nose, then by rubbing the cloth on my thighs, but they insist on staying put. “Could you push my sleeves back up?” I hold my arms up, like a sterilized surgeon waiting for gloves, hands milky with flour and water. Seamus gently returns the cuffs to their place above my elbows. The wrinkles in his knuckles are also filled with dried dough. “Thanks. I have no idea what’s out. What does Cecelia want to see?”
“She has a sleepover that night.”
“Oh,” I say, surprised, and then, “Oh,” again, this syllable lower and longer and more informed.
“You don’t have to,” he says, words and tips of his ears red with my misunderstanding.
“No, I will.” My response, nearly as quick as his, catches us both off guard. He stares at me, and in the seconds he’s frozen, I turn my decision around and around, peering at it from every angle my mind can conceive. I’m doing this because I feel put on the spot, because he’s been here the past two weeks preparing bread and I owe him, because I want to shield him from his embarrassment, because I don’t know how to decline.
No. I agree because I want to. It is my choice.
“Are you sure?” he finally asks, and he thinks I’ll change my mind.
I nod. “I haven’t gone out in ages. It sounds like fun.”
The frenetic energy always surging through him builds—I feel it in the room—and his smile grows so large the rest of his head nearly disappears into a crescent moon of teeth and beard. “I’d crow if Cecelia wasn’t just through there,” he says, and then the little girl is there, complaining there is no toilet paper in the bathroom and she waited and waited for Seamus to come find her to see what was taking so long, and when he didn’t, she tiptoed to the towel dispenser and used the rough brown paper from there, but she didn’t flush it because she knew, from experience, it can clog the pipes.
“And now I am grumpy,” she says, yawning again.
“Like a big, hungry, sleepy bear,” Seamus roars, first lifting his hands in the air, curling his fingers into claws, and then swiping them down around Cecelia, lifting her into his embrace and nuzzling her until her pout turns to giggles.
“Let me wash up and I’ll see you out,” I say, but he shakes his head and tells me not to bother, manages to pack Cecelia’s book bag with one arm while holding her in his other, and they both say good night.
I finish preparation for tomorrow and set the buckets and bowls and utensils to soak so they’ll be easier to wash in the morning. It isn’t until the lights are off and the doors locked I realize I’ve been infected with Seamus’s smile. There’s also something else, something frail and small, the wings of a moth, a spider’s web, something I don’t want to examine too closely for fear it will disintegrate upon too much handling. Something a little bit bubbly inside, foaming up to fill long-time-empty spaces.
In the stairwell to my apartment, the mail is on the floor, pushed through the slot this afternoon. I gather it all. On top of the pile is a folded section of newspaper. The movie section, with the words U PICK scrawled in orange colored pencil.
Fourteen
Oma’s stoneware crock of sourdough nestles between a jar of bread and butter pickles and a plastic bottle of mustard in the door of the refrigerator. My mother’s own jar has been bumped to the back of the top shelf, behind the milk and an ancient cardboard bucket of chicken and unidentifiable leftovers in Saran Wrap–covered bowls, too close to the cooling unit, ice crystals sparkling on the surface. I ignore them for a month after her death, then six weeks. Then eight. But ignoring doesn’t mean I forget about them; I only pretend I don’t see them, the visual equivalent of jamming my pointer fingers in my ears and repeating na-ni-na-ni-nana over and over. Soon I have anxiety over opening the door at all. I eat only from the pantry and the cabinets, dry food, canned food, and then I won’t go into the kitchen at all. I buy extra Fritos and bottles of Yoo-Hoo at school lunchtime and devour them in my bedroom at night.
There’s life in those jars, sluggish and sleepy in a sort of cold-induced suspended animation. It only takes twenty minutes or so once a week to care for them, but it’s twenty minutes of holding my hand directly in the flame of death—my mother’s, grandmother’s—and once I caught fire I’d want to be there with them too.
In my haze of sadness, though, I still feel the pulse of the starters throughout the house, throughout me, beating with my own heart, pleading to be spared. They’ve come half a century and an entire ocean too far to be dumped in the trash.
I take them to Jennie Rausenberg’s house, to her mother, and ask her to love them for me. She understands and agrees.
Time passes. More weeks. More months. My father swathes himself in religion. I cover my thighs in bruises. We’re losing each other. And her. She is all around us in her things, in the dust, and yet she’s hemorrhaging from u
s because we don’t know how to hold her in our memories without them growing into a tangle and strangling us, and we don’t know how to tuck her aside without misplacing her forever.
I try to reclaim a fragment of her, in the sourdough starter. I am not ready to work with hers—it’s too close. Too fragile. I will, instead, culture my own. I borrow a book from the library, read about capturing wild yeasts from the air. On the first sunny, dry day, I mix one cup of water and one cup of flour in a Mason jar, stirring until it’s sludge. I find a window screen in the basement—it’s spring but our storms are still in—and cut a square of black mesh from it, not caring my father will have to repair the hole. I wash the piece of screening in soap and water, dry it with a clean paper towel, and use a rubber band to fasten it over the mouth of the jar. Then I go into the backyard.
It’s overgrown, the grass highest around the trees, beside the fence. The clothesline has fallen down at one end, the rusted metal pulley rotted from the dying birch at the far end of our property, the rope embedded in the mud, then rising from the ground and up to the house, screwed into the back porch. My mother stood there, hanging all our white clothes and linens because the sun works stronger than any chlorine bleach, and there’s a cannonball in my chest—I swallow over and over but it stays lodged there, heavy because I know the clothesline won’t be fixed and sheets will never flap on it again.
I’m out here for a purpose, though. I hold the jar out and spin, catching air inside it. I run through the weeds, hoping the disruption will kick up yeast. Then, out of breath, I sit on the ground with the jar between my knees, April soaking through my jeans, and wait for something to happen, too small for me to see.
My father doesn’t come. He says he will see it at home, and I’m relieved. Xavier and Jude also aren’t here, since their shift begins at three in the morning, though I suspect at least Xavier will watch. He doesn’t sleep much anyway.
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